There is no evidence of an increased link between adolescent involvement with digital technology and mental health problems.
Digital technology is omnipresent among today's adolescents, and researchers are concerned that its negative effects on mental health may increase further over time. To investigate whether technology is becoming more harmful, we examined changes in the relationship between technology engagement and mental health in three nationally representative samples. Results were mixed on the type of technology and mental health outcomes. Technology involvement was less strongly associated with depression over the past decade, while social media use was more strongly associated with emotional problems. No changes were detected in the other five associations or in the different associations by gender. Thus, there is little evidence of an increased association between adolescents' involvement with technology and mental health. Information on new digital media was collected in a relatively short period of time. It may be premature to draw firm conclusions about the changing association with mental health. We call for transparent and trustworthy cooperation between scientists and technology companies.
Vuorre M, Orben A, Przybylski AK There is no evidence of an increased association between adolescents' engagement with digital technology and mental health problems. Clinical Psychology. may 2021. doi: 10.1177 / 2167702621994549
Commentary
This study of adolescent mental health and technology engagement focused on three large, nationally representative data sets from the United States and United Kingdom, including relevant variables and a total of 430,561 participants.
The analysis of this study found that there was no consistent change in the relationship between technology and mental health over time. The association between behavioral problems and suicidality also tended to be stable over time, and the relationship between social media and emotional problems showed a slight increase in problems over time, but not with television, and furthermore, both social media and television showed a decrease in their association with depression In addition, both social media and television showed a declining association with depression.
The increasing emotional and other problems despite these analyses emphasized the scientific value of examining something more dynamic. A limitation of the study results is that, unlike longitudinal intra-personal data, these findings did not "directly" assert a causal relationship between technology use and mental health.
What we want to understand from this study is that while technology has become a widespread necessity in our lives, there has been a lot of attention paid to its adverse reports on mental health, and the results of this study, if supported by empirical research, suggest that this idea could potentially be a policy intervention. However, there is little evidence to suggest that technology is becoming more harmful over time, so additional research is needed to investigate mental health changes over time, it said.
